


The Problem of Susan

by MarcusRowland



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Podfic Welcome, The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-08 15:10:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1134136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarcusRowland/pseuds/MarcusRowland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After her family is killed, Susan Pevensie starts to remember Narnia. Someone thinks that's a very bad idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a crossover between the Dr. Who universe and the Narnia stories - all characters etc. belong to various people who aren't me, there is no intent to infringe on their rights. Comments, warnings about spelling mistakes, etc. etc. gratefully received.
> 
> The title of this story was originally used by Neil Gaiman, and has become a common term for discussion of Susan’s exclusion from the later stories of the Narnia sequence.

“Did I fall asleep?” asks Susan Pevensie.

“For a little while,” says the handsome RAF captain seated across the railway carriage. He has an American accent, and she wonders if he’s a Hollywood actor, come to Britain to fight the Nazis. Even in 1943 there are still some around, though many have gone to the Pacific. “Are you okay?”

“I had a really odd dream.” She doesn’t want to discuss it. There were talking animals, and witches, and magic. Like the games she and her brothers and sisters used to play, and she doesn’t want to seem a child. “Got a cigarette?”

“Aren’t you a little young to smoke?”

“I’m seventeen.” She adds on eighteen months.

“Sure you are….” He obviously doesn’t believe her.

“Well, sixteen and a half.”

“Riiiight.”

“Does it matter?”

“Legal smoking age is sixteen,” says the captain, “and even that’s too young to make decisions that’ll eventually kill you. I’d make it eighteen or twenty-one. I’ve got some bubble-gum if you’d like that.”

“No thanks.” He’s obviously some sort of puritan. She reaches into her bag and looks for her own cigarettes, doesn’t find any. Instead she gets out her compact and lipstick, and spends a minute or two adjusting her makeup. And yes, she’s sulking a little, but he probably doesn’t notice.

As she finishes the train slows for yet another station, and the captain says “This is my stop,” stands, stretches, and reaches up to the luggage rack, lifting down a canvas duffel-bag and a polished wooden box, the size of a large hat-box, with brass locks and handles and a leather shoulder-strap. The duffel is marked with the initials J.H., the box with an inlaid hexagon containing the letter T, both difficult to see since the wood and logo are both very dark.

As the train draws into the station and stops he slides down the window, reaches out and turns the handle to open the door, hands the duffel bag out to a uniformed chauffeur who seems to waiting for him, takes the wooden box, says “Goodbye, Susan,” and walks off with the chauffeur. There’s a big black Bentley waiting for them, with the same T in hexagon mark on the door.

As the train leaves the station she wonders how he knew her name. But her bag’s on the rack, her name visible on the label. It isn’t really much of a mystery, and she soon forgets him.

< T >

Six years pass, and Susan grows distant from her family, especially her brothers and sisters. At first she’s annoyed by their childish tales of a magical world inside a wardrobe; later, when they’re barely on speaking terms after she’s left school, she starts to dream of… that place, and the lion that rules it. Gradually she has to admit that the memories are getting stronger, not weaker. Could she have forgotten something real? She plans to ask them the next time she sees them. Then there’s the train crash, and that chance has gone forever. Her parents, brothers and sister are dead, so are Scrubb and Pole.

She inherits a little over four thousand pounds, mostly invested in bonds which pay a steady return, and the leasehold of their flat. If she leaves the money where it is the income will comfortably cover the rent and basic living expenses, but she’s not exactly an heiress; at best it gives her a breathing space to find a better job, maybe take a holiday. The effects the police return to her include a key she doesn’t recognise; looking through her father’s papers she eventually discovers that his bank statements include rental of a safe deposit box. It takes a couple of days to get a letter from his solicitors, giving her access as part of the probate process, then she goes to the bank and investigates.

There’s a few hundred pounds in the old white pre-war banknotes, but she’s not sure if they can still be used, some papers, and a jewellery case containing three necklaces, two rings, a delicate coronet of gold and silver flowers, and two bracelets. At first she doesn’t recognise the jewellery, it looks very expensive, but suddenly memory stirs. She remembers wearing the coronet and one of the rings… but the memories come from her confused dreams of Narnia. All of it’s too grand for everyday wear, but there’s a small locket that doesn’t seem too ostentatious. She works the catch, and finds a miniature picture inside, a tiny oil-painting. It’s herself as an adult, wearing medieval-looking green robes and the coronet. She tries to remember…

 _Summer in Cair Paravel, the year before they hunted the White Stag. A group of centaur artists had come to visit. She’d spent hours posing, chafing in the heat and wishing she’d insisted on a lighter dress. They’d made the statues the children found when they returned to Narnia nine hundred years later, also paintings and smaller miniatures. One of them gave her the locket, but it had vanished when she returned to England and was twelve years old again._ Now, impossibly, it was here. She puts the locket on, puts the rest of the jewellery back in the case, and turns her attention to the papers.

Ten minutes later she knows she was adopted in 1929, a year before Edmund was born, three years before Lucy. She would have been one, Peter would have been two; she doesn’t remember anything that far back, and if Peter did he never mentioned it. It’s too late to ask now. The names of her real parents aren’t anywhere on the papers. She’s described as ‘The female child (Susan),’ her origin isn’t mentioned. She realises that she’s never seen her birth certificate – a quick search through the remaining envelopes confirms that it’s nowhere to be found – and that this paper is probably the closest she’s going to get to one. Reading through again, she notices something she should have spotted earlier; the witnesses are Professor Kirke, who owned the house where they found the wardrobe, if that really happened, and aunt Polly, his wife. If she can find them they might be able to tell her more.

She takes the bank notes with her, and asks the manager about using them – they aren’t legal tender any more, but if she fills in some forms the Bank of England will make sure that they aren’t forgeries, then eventually give her their face value in modern notes. It generally takes a couple of weeks, and of course she’ll have to deal with the taxman eventually. A teller counts the notes as she fills in the paperwork; nearly six hundred pounds, enough to buy a good car. Before the war it could have easily bought a small house, and she wonders why her parents stayed in the flat.

< T >

Susan remembers Kirke living in a grand old country house, but heard that he had to sell it; his new address is in her mother’s diary. There’s no phone number, and Directory Enquiries say that they don’t have a telephone. It’s in the country twenty-odd miles from his old home. There’s something familiar-sounding about the name of the village, but she doesn’t remember properly until her train pulls into the station; it’s on the line from London to her school, and she passed it six times a year for seven years. It’s the line her family were travelling on when they were killed.

The house – actually more of a cottage – is a mile or so from the station. She finds it locked, and sits down to wait on the doorstep. After half an hour she hears cheery whistling, and looks up to see a postman making the afternoon delivery to the next house. Village postmen know everyone on their routes, of course.

“Excuse me,” she says, getting to her feet, “do you happen to know when Professor Kirke will be back?”

“Professor Kirke? Hadn’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Well…” he seems to consider for a moment, then says “There was a bit of an accident.”

“An accident?”

“Two weeks ago. They were going up to London for the day, the train…” The rest of what he says is lost in the roaring in her ears as she faints.

< T >

She comes round to find a small crowd gathered around her; the postman, a bobby, an elderly woman in dark mourning clothes, and three small children. “What happened?”

“You fainted, Miss Susan,” says the woman, and Susan finally recognises her; Mrs. MacReady, Professor Kirke’s housekeeper. “You poor thing… didn’t you know the Professor was on the train?” They’ve obviously been talking while she was unconscious.

“No, nobody told me. I never looked at the list once I knew about my family.”

“No reason why you should, Miss Susan. Come inside, I’ll make you some tea.”

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” asks the postman.

“I think so,” says Susan. “Just a bit of a shock.”

The tea is just the way she liked it when she was twelve, with too much milk and sugar. Right now that’s exactly what she needs. She’s sipping it when the obvious question crosses her mind. “How did you recognise me? I was twelve the last time I saw you.”

“Your parents kept in touch with the Professor. They sent photos every now and again.”

“My parents?” She hesitates for a moment, then asks “Which ones?”

“How do you mean?” There’s something in Mrs. MacReady’s eyes. She knows exactly what Susan means.

“I know I’m adopted. I found the papers in father’s safety deposit box.”

“I don’t really know much more than that myself,” says Mrs. MacReady. “It was a friend of the Professor that arranged it, Captain something or another. I remember he said you were a foundling.”

“Foundling? Found where?”

“I really don’t know. It was something to do with some Institute, the Professor was a consultant for them, that Captain… Harper, maybe… No, that wasn’t quite it. He worked for them.”

“Can’t you remember anything about him?”

“I haven’t seen him since the war. He was ever so handsome, and had a lovely accent, like a movie star.”

“American?”

“That’s right, love. Captain… Captain Harkness, that was it! He was in one of those Eagle squadrons, Americans who joined the RAF before Pearl Harbour. I heard he’d been shot down by the Germans during the Blitz, but that can’t have been right, I saw him after that.” She refills Susan’s cup from the pot; this time Susan adds the milk herself, and only one spoon of sugar.

“Maybe the American Embassy can find him. What about the… institute, I think you said?”

“Some sort of scientific thing, I never paid it much heed. I think the Professor said it was Queen Victoria that founded it.”

“Queen Victoria? Not Prince Albert?”

“Why Prince Albert?”

“He was a patron of the sciences,” says Susan. “I didn’t think Victoria was nearly so interested.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Do they have an office somewhere?”

“A couple of times the Professor had me post letters to Captain Harkness. It was a post office box, somewhere in Cardiff.”

**TBC**


	2. Chapter 2

The most direct route to Cardiff is via London; since she has to go back there anyway, she decides to go home, get a good night’s sleep, and find out as much as she can before heading for Wales. Mrs. MacReady insists on giving her a pot of honey from the Professor’s hives, an illegal package of off-ration bacon, and a dozen eggs; Susan makes a token protest, but knows that she’ll enjoy breakfast in the morning.

After that, the obvious move is to call Directory Enquiries and ask if they have a number for a Captain Harkness in Cardiff. They don’t, and without a first name – which Mrs. MacReady couldn’t supply – or address they aren’t prepared to give her numbers for everyone called Harkness in the city. It’s time to start asking questions.

Her first stop is the American Embassy. They’re used to that sort of enquiry, though usually it comes from women accompanied by small children, and once she’s filled in the few details she knows a handsome young Marine goes off to check the files, and comes back a few minutes later. There was only one officer who fits the bill, a Captain Jack Harkness; the photograph shows a dark-haired officer. He enlisted in Canada a few weeks after the war began, arrived in Britain in October 1939, flew with one of the Eagle squadrons, and was killed in January 1941. There are no living relatives. They don’t have any reason to believe that isn’t correct; when she explains a little more, he checks some other records then returns. “There was an odd report – someone using that name in London a few weeks after he was killed, during the Blitz, passed some bad cheques. Nothing ever came of it though. Maybe an impostor, or just a coincidence of names. You’ll have to check with the RAF or Scotland Yard, they might know more.”

The Harkness in their records couldn’t have been involved in her adoption, of course, he was in Canada before 1939. But maybe there really is another Captain Jack Harkness out there. Armed with the name she calls Directory Enquiries again, but they still can’t help her. Either he doesn’t have a phone or it’s ex-directory.

At the War Office they ask her to fill in forms explaining her request, and tell her to expect a reply in two to three weeks. Not very helpful. Scotland Yard isn’t much better. She has an uneasy feeling that they won’t help her.

She has no idea how to track down an ‘institute’, even one created by Queen Victoria, but guesses that the Victoria and Albert Museum might be able to help. She explains her quest at the enquiries desk; the duty officer thinks for a moment, then directs her to one of the offices in the basement, the lair of a Professor Morgan.

“It could be a charity with a royal charter,” says the elderly curator she finds there, poring over old books in a haze of pipe smoke, “the trouble is that there must be thousands of them, her rule spanned sixty-three years. But the word ‘Institute’ does ring several bells… just a moment.” He goes off, comes back with a dusty ledger.

“One of my students found this just before the war. Chap called Evans, he was writing a paper on the history of the Privy Purse, poor fellow never finished it. He joined the army when the war began, his troop ship was torpedoed en route to Africa.” He opens the ledger to the last week of 1879, and points to an entry half-way down the page. “Here we are… a payment of ten thousand pounds to the Torchwood Institute, paid from the Queen’s own funds and authorised directly by the Queen.” He turns to another bookmark. “Another six thousand in March the following year, with a second payment of seventeen hundred pounds a few months later. Continued with similar amounts in 1881 to 1885. That sort of money could have paid for… oh, let’s say the Royal Navy’s first destroyer, with a good deal of change. And we have very little idea what it was spent on, beyond the name of the institute.”

“What happened after 1885?”

“Oh, after 1885 there’s still a hole around the same size in the Royal finances, right up to the end of the Queen’s reign, but it isn’t explicitly going to Torchwood. I think it was still happening, but for some reason they decided to cover it up a little more.”

“Maybe it’s the Secret Service or something?” Susan asks. “Why Torchwood? What does it mean?”

Morgan smiles, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “It isn’t the Secret Service; that comes out of the budget for… well, never mind. If it was that, I can assure you that I wouldn’t be telling you. As for the rest…” He coughs, and goes on: “In November 1879 Queen Victoria’s train was stopped by a fallen tree en route to Balmoral Castle. As a result she spent a night at Torchwood House, the home of Sir Robert MacLeish. Whatever happened there was hushed up, but MacLeish and several of his servants died that night, along with at least two of the Queen’s attendants. The deaths were recorded as being caused by a landside, but there was never a public inquest or enquiry, and the bodies were cremated. I suspect that there was an attempt to assassinate the Queen, it wouldn’t have been the first time.”

“Did they usually hush them up?”

“You have an instinct for this, I see. No, the usual response was arrest of those involved, a prompt trial, and the noose or the asylum for the perpetrator.”

“Can you tell me anything else about the Institute? You said you knew very little about what they spent the money on – that implies that there’s something that you do know.”

“Very good, Miss Pevensie. Faultless logic. And yes, we do have a small clue. The original plan was for the Queen to spend the Christmas holiday through to the New Year at Balmoral, returning in January. Instead she returned to London immediately after the Torchwood House incident, and invitations were sent to various eminent men for an urgent meeting at the Palace. The Prime Minister, some senior offices in the Army and Navy, and a veritable Who’s Who of scientists and engineers, including some of the finest minds of the era, as well as some who we would now regard as somewhat suspect. And to the best of my knowledge none of them ever revealed what was discussed there.”

“That was seventy years ago,” says Susan. “Is there anyone still alive who might have been at the meeting? Or someone that someone at the meeting might have talked to? I know it isn’t likely, but if someone brought along a student, or an apprentice…?”

He hesitates.

“Professor Morgan… I think you’ve been worrying at this ever since mister… Evans, was it? … ever since he died. I think you’ve probably looked at every name on that list. Am I right? Don’t you want me to try to find out more?”

Eventually, with some persuasion, he gives her a name; Lady Juliet Sinclair, the daughter of a prominent engineer, later one of the leading figures in the construction of London’s underground railways.

< T >

“My father was a genius,” says the old lady, “but he had a dreadful memory and his handwriting was awful. As soon as I was old enough he’d take me along to meetings. If I was allowed in he’d have me sit in a corner and take notes; if not, he’d leave me sitting outside, scribble some notes, and we’d go through them in the carriage on the way home, write things out so we could read them, so as not to forget anything. I remember that meeting quite well… it was the first time I visited Buckingham Palace, and I was wearing my Sunday best, and the old Queen saw me waiting there as she was going in, and stopped to talk to me, asked me who I was and why I was there. So I told her, and she told me that it was going to be a long meeting, and sent me off with her ladies in waiting to have some lunch. They went on until nearly seven that evening, and when father came out he looked… well, shaken, like he’d seen a ghost.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. I asked him if there were any notes, and he said ‘Not for this,’ and wouldn’t say another word. When we got home he told me that the Queen had said that a smart girl like me should be improving herself, not following her father around all day, and he asked me if I wanted to go to university. And when I admitted I did, someone must have used a lot of influence; I was one of the first women to study at the Normal School of Science in South Kensington, which became the Royal College of Science. For a while I was in the same class as H.G. Wells, though of course nobody knew what was going to become of him. I ended up taking engineering, and eventually went back to work for my father.”

“What happened then?”

“Whatever he was doing was over by then, I think. Certainly he never spoke of it again. But I do know that when we got our first contract to build a deep tube line, he already knew exactly how we were going to do it, had all of the engineering methods at his fingertips. It saved us months.”

“And you think that the meeting had something to do with that?” asks Susan.

“Not the meeting,” says Lady Juliet, “not just that. You don’t get that sort of knowledge from a meeting. The only way you get it is by doing it. They must have built something; something big, and deep underground. But he would never talk of it, and there was nothing in the company records.”

< T >

Susan wakes with no memory of having gone home or fallen asleep. She’s in bed, still wearing her underwear and her slip, and her mouth tastes like something died in it. She’s been dreaming again, that silly game she used to play with the other children, queens and kings and talking animals. She stumbles to the loo and takes a stomach powder and an aspirin. There’s a mess in the living room, it looks like she spilled a bottle of whisky. Why would she have been drinking? She can’t remember. And why whisky, of all things? She rarely drinks, when she does she prefers wine or sherry, and there are bottles of both in the flat. She tries to remember, checks the calendar, and discovers that she’s somehow lost more than a week. The last thing she remembers is moving back into the flat after the funeral. Why would she have been drinking?

She checks that the hot water is working and draws a bath. As she undresses she realises she’s wearing a silver locket, one she doesn’t remember. It opens to a picture – a woman who looks a bit like her, wearing a green dress and a coronet. It reminds her of that game, Queen Susan the… the Gentle, that was it. She must have found it in a shop somewhere in the days she doesn’t remember.

Once she’s clean she puts on a bathrobe and goes to the kitchen. Maybe a cup of tea will help. There’s bacon in the fridge, a pound or so of rashers wrapped in greaseproof paper. She can’t remember buying it, and that’s a month’s ration for a single person. And ten eggs in the larder; with the rationing you can rarely get more than a couple, or the horrible powdered mix that’s only good for making cakes. Her ration book is in her handbag; she hasn’t bought them, at least not legally, and she usually does her best to avoid the black market. She checks the rest of the larder’s contents; the bread is getting a little stale, and there’s nothing else that seems out of place except a jar of honey she doesn’t remember buying, there’s no label so it doesn’t tell her much. 

She makes herself the best breakfast she's had in years – bacon and eggs, fried bread, toast with honey, and tea – and tries to think things through. Why the whisky? Why the mess? It really isn’t like her at all. After tidying the living room she goes through her bag more systematically, but doesn’t find anything interesting until she notices that there are a couple of pages missing from the back of her diary. That’s where she usually notes down addresses and telephone numbers. She finds a pencil and gently rubs it over the next page, hoping that she might find the traces of the last thing she wrote, but while that usually works in the movies all that she sees is a meaningless mess.

There’s a slight noise from the hall, and she goes out to find a few letters. Three bills, and something from her father’s bank manager:

> Miss Pevensie,
> 
> I write to inform you that you seem to have left the key to your safety deposit box in my office on Tuesday. I would be grateful if you could call in to collect it at your earliest convenience; in case I am not in when you call in, please bring your passport or other means of identification.
> 
> Yrs…

Box? What box? She has no memory of Tuesday at all, or Monday, or the weekend. What about the previous week? Yes, she remembers now, her solicitors were arranging for her to have access to her father’s deposit box. She must have gone into the bank about that. Maybe something there will jog her memory.

< T >

The manager is at lunch when she gets there, so she proves her identity and picks up the key. The clerk mentions in passing that they’re still waiting to hear back from the Bank of England; she has no idea what he’s talking about, but doesn’t want to look like an idiot and say so. On the other hand, nobody expects a pretty girl to be Einstein.

“How long does it normally take?”

“Well, as Mister Dean said on Tuesday, the Bank has to be sure that none of the notes are forgeries. The Nazis did forge vast quantities of those old white tenners, so it really isn’t unreasonable. Once they’re satisfied they’ll issue a cheque for the full amount, and we’ll be able to credit it to your account. It shouldn’t take more than a fortnight or so, unless there are problems.”

“That’s good. One thing, did I leave the receipt here with the key? I can’t seem to find it anywhere.”

“No, but it won’t be a problem. It’s all in our ledgers.”

“Thank you. You’re going to think I’m dreadfully silly, but I can’t remember the exact amount – I thought I’d written it down in my diary, but the number ends in six so it must be something else.”

He checks the ledger – why does that seem important? – then says “Five hundred and eighty pounds.”

“Oh, then I must have written the nought so it looked like a six. Silly me.”

Why on earth would there be that much money in her father’s box? He could have bought a house for less than that before the war. Maybe there are more clues in the box. “While I’m here, I need to check something else. Could I go to the box again?”

“Of course, I’ll take you down.”

He escorts her down and leaves her with the box. She opens it; some papers – she discovers, to her surprise, that she’s adopted – and a jewel box. There’s a coronet inside, exactly like the one worn by the woman in the miniature. Her head’s aching as she holds it and looks for any clue to its origin. She’s never sure what impulse makes her put it on.

**TBC**


	3. Chapter 3

“Daughter of Eve. Why are you here?”

She looks up. She’s not in the vault, she’s in a meadow, a warm summer’s day with a cloudless sky. Her clothes… she’s wearing the green robes and the coronet, the bracelets and rings that were in the box. And walking towards her…

“Aslan!” Suddenly her memories of Narnia are clear, every moment of the time she spent there. How could she have ever thought it was just a game? It’s even more beautiful than she remembers.

“Susan… this is not your time to be here.”

“Oh, Aslan!” Words pour out of her as she tells him everything, her confusion and regrets. By the time she’s done she’s sobbing into his mane.

“Your brothers and sisters, your parents and their friends, all are safe here with Me.”

“Please… can I see them?”

“Not yet. When you are much older, when you are done with your world, then you can come back to Me. Now is not that time.”

“Why can’t I remember properly?”

“There is a cloud on your mind.” He sniffs at her, seems to scowl, and paces around her. “I might cure you here, but you would forget again. Are you sure you wish to remember?”

“Yes!”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

She remembers her fairy tales – he’s going to ask again, three times are the charm – but instead he roars, so loud that she has to clutch her ears and bow her head, screw her eyes closed against the physical impact of the noise. Abruptly the noise stops. She opens her eyes, and finds herself sitting at the table in the vault, wearing her normal clothing, the contents of the box spread out in front of her.

Except… except that the coronet is gone, and when she touches her hair she finds a wreath of tiny exquisite flowers. And there’s something new on the table. A small crystal bottle, containing a teaspoon or so of clear liquid. She remembers; Lucy’s cordial bottle. A single drop was once enough to save a life. With trembling hands she pulls out the stopper and puts a drop onto her finger, swallows it. And remembers.

_She’s on her way home from school, three days before the end of term; she’s going to America with father - the convoy leaves tomorrow, so she can’t wait for school to break up. She’s looking forward to the adventure despite the risks of wartime travel; after all, she’s a Queen of Narnia, she’s been in peril more often than she can count, and anyway she’s heard that most of the risk is on the way back to Britain. The journey is slow; mostly the Nazis seem to have given up daylight raids, but the train is low priority compared to armaments and troops, and is taking a circuitous route. A few stops from school most of the passengers in her compartment disembark, leaving her with a woman in WRNS uniform who’s working on the Times crossword. A ridiculously handsome man in an RAF greatcoat boards, carrying a wooden box on a leather shoulder strap. An airman on the platform hands him a duffel bag, salutes, and slams the door closed. As he puts his duffel bag onto the luggage rack his sleeve rides up and she notices a broad leather strap on his wrist, something that looks like an oversized watch with a leather cover._

_As the train starts moving the Wren puts her paper aside, closes the corridor door, puts a RESERVED sign on the glass, locks it, and pulls down the blinds. The man sits facing her, and says “Hello, Susan. I’m Jack.”_

Memories flood back. The name Jack Harkness, the American Embassy and the picture they showed her (a different man, not quite as handsome and a little older), the Victorian ledgers, everything she’s done over the past week. And things further back, still a little blurred. She puts another drop of the cordial on her finger, puts it in her mouth, and swallows it down.

_“Who are you? What do you want?” Susan isn’t panicking – it takes a lot to scare her – but this Jack is bigger and stronger than she is, she can’t ignore the possibility that he might want to hurt her. And the Wren is obviously working with him._

_“You need to forget about Narnia.”_

_“Narnia?” She pretends not to understand._

_“You and your brothers and sisters really haven’t been very discreet. You seem to have a knack for finding portals, or maybe they have a knack for finding you.”_

_“I don’t understand,” says Susan._

_He opens the wooden box, revealing a Bakelite panel studded with dials and control knobs, and says “I don’t have time to explain.” He flicks a switch on the box, and it makes a screeching noise, like an out-of-tune radio. “She’s still radiating rift energy, as strongly as ever.” The Wren nods._

_“Your brothers and sisters are losing their energy,” says Harkness. “We just need to keep them away from the wardrobe, they can't make a new portal. You’re different… you’re still packed with the stuff. Maybe it’s our fault, we should have realised the wardrobe was a potential portal, we shouldn’t have let you anywhere near the Professor’s house. But it has to stop.”_

_Without warning the Wren grabs her hand and injects something into her arm, saying “Next station in five minutes.”_

_Harkness nods to the Wren, saying “I’ll handle the rest, you get off while she’s out,” then turns to Susan and says “You need to forget about Narnia, and the wardrobe, and anything to do with portals. If anything reminds you of them, it’s a game you used to play when you were children. You’re much too grown up for that now.”_

_“What if I don’t want to forget?” She wants to argue, but feels waves of darkness sweeping over her, memories fading from her mind._

_“I’m sorry… we can’t give you that option.”_

_“but I…” Blankness… “Did I fall asleep?”_

_“For a little while,” says the handsome RAF captain seated across the railway carriage._

For a moment she wonders if Harkness had her family killed, somehow arranged the train crash; he seems ruthless enough. But surely he would have killed her first, and he’s had opportunities to do so. Nevertheless a cold anger rises in her at the way she’s been treated, at the wonders they made her forget. For the first time that she can remember she feels the urge to kill.

< T >

She knows when they caught up with her this time; just after she left Lady Juliet’s flat, two men she’d never seen before bundled her into a taxi and injected her. She can’t remember precisely what happened next, she guesses that they kept her drugged while they took her back to the flat and staged the drunken mess she woke to, told her to forget everything again. Maybe Harkness was there, but it doesn’t necessarily follow; Torchwood must be a big powerful organisation, they have other agents. She goes back through everything that she’s done, and guesses that Scotland Yard probably told them she’d been asking for Harkness. There are other possibilities, of course, but that seems the most likely.

She’d told Scotland Yard that she’d learned that she was adopted, and that the adoption had probably been arranged by Captain Harkness. What else had she said? She thinks it through, and realises that she mentioned the Professor and Mrs. MacReady – she has an uneasy feeling that if she goes back to see her again, Mrs. MacReady will have no recollection of Captain Harkness or Torchwood. Neither will Lady Juliet or anyone at the museum. What else? The adoption papers, of course, and the safe-deposit box.

If she mentioned that – and she’s sure she did – it can only be a matter of hours before someone comes to make sure that nothing in the box points to Torchwood or can remind her of Narnia. She’s only surprised that nobody is here already. She leafs through the papers again and takes the adoption papers, stows the jewellery in her handbag and pockets, the vial on the chain with the locket between her breasts. The bank provides stationery for its customers; she sandwiches the circle of flowers in a folded sheet of blotting-paper and puts it into an envelope, addressed to herself. She’ll post it as soon as she can, maybe it’ll jog her memory if she forgets again.

“What would Peter do?” The question comes to her lips spontaneously. When they ruled Narnia never lost a war, and Peter Wolfslayer’s tactics were the main reason for their success. It’s time to take the fight to the enemy.

**TBC**

**note:** WRNS is short for Women's Royal Naval Service, colloquially Wrens.


	4. Chapter 4

She leaves the bank five minutes later, pretending not to notice the man who’s trailing her, one of the men that abducted her the previous night, and walks a few hundred yards to Oxford Street. She spends the next thirty minutes pretending to shop then loses him via the changing rooms in Selfridges fashion department, aided by a shop assistant who believes her tale of being followed by an abusive ex-boyfriend and lets her slip out through the fire exit without setting off the alarm.

Could they track her from a distance? In her memories Harkness had a machine that detected something called ‘rift energy,’ whatever that is, but the equipment looked complicated, expensive, and heavy, and Harkness waited until he was close before he used it; she’s betting that it wouldn’t work at any great range. She might be all right if she can stay out of sight. She doubles back towards the bank, sticking to side streets and back alleys, posts the flowers, visits a stationers, and ends up in a cheap café across the road from the bank. She’s already drinking her tea when a black Rover arrives and Harkness gets out and heads into the bank.

< T >

“Find what you were looking for?” Harkness starts to twist round in the driver’s seat, then goes very still when he feels the prick of a knife against the back of his neck. It’s only a letter-opener, and not very sharp, but he doesn’t know that.

“Susan Pevensie, I presume.”

“I thought it was time we had a little talk. This time I’d like to remember it.” There’s something about Harkness that grates on her nerves, makes her sharper and angrier. It helps.

“You’re very persistent.”

“I’ve been a queen, Captain Harkness; I expect to get my own way.”

“And if I tell you?”

“First I’ll decide if I can believe you. Then I’ll decide what I want to do about it. Convince me, and I might even try to be helpful.”

“I can be a lot more convincing without a knife at my throat.”

“Actually I think that’s your spine, not your throat. Think carefully, Captain.”

“Okay…” Harkness raises his hands from the wheel. “Tell me what you want to know, I’ll tell you as much as I can.”

“And if I don’t ask the right questions?”

“Tough luck.”

“Drive us somewhere quiet, somewhere where people won’t sneak up on us easily. I’d hate it if we were interrupted.”

“Not with a knife in my back. That’s just an accident waiting to happen.”

“You don’t want to drive? All right, let’s walk to Hyde Park, it isn’t far. We can sit down there and talk.”

“Or we could talk here,” suggests Harkness.

“I expect that you’re thinking,” says Susan, “that if we stay in the car you can inject me with one of the hypodermics I took out of the glove compartment. That isn’t going to happen, although I do wonder what would happen if I injected you. I’m guessing that there’s some sort of antidote, or you wouldn’t be messing around with that muck.”

“I’d rather not try it.” For the first time he actually sounds worried, and she wonders why he considers amnesia worse than paralysis or death. “Okay, the park. I’m going to open the door and get out, if you’ll let me move.”

“Go ahead, I’ll be right behind you.”

He climbs out and moves to open the passenger door, but she’s slid across the seat and got out on the pavement side. “Which way is the park?” asks Harkness.

“Nice try, but I think you can lead the way.”

He glances at her, and says “That’s a paper knife.”

“It is,” says Susan, “but it’s a well-balanced one, I think I could get it into your eye at this range.”

“I thought they called you ‘Susan the Gentle.’”

“That was before people started messing around with my mind.”

After that he doesn’t give her any more trouble. Ten minutes later they’re sitting at opposite ends of a wooden seat in the park.

< T >

“Let’s start with an easy question,” says Susan. “What’s rift energy, and what does it have to do with me?”

Harkness raises his eyebrows. “You remember that?”

“I remember that, and I remember that bitch injecting my arm, and your goons last night. What’s this about, Captain Harkness?”

“There’s a rift in Cardiff, a weakness in space and time where things can come into our world. When that happens we detect a particular pattern of radiation we call rift energy, and anything that comes through radiates it for a few days, say a week at most. Usually, anyway. A lot of the things that come through are dangerous, one way or another. Monsters, or technology we don’t understand, things from different times and places.”

“And..?”

“In 1929 the thing we found was a baby, about a year old. You.”

“I’m not from this world?”

“Yes and no. You’re human, as far as we can tell, there’s just no record of a missing child matching your description, and you had the highest rift energy reading we’ve ever encountered. It could be that you’re from Narnia, or the past or future, or another timeline altogether.”

Her head whirls, she tries to concentrate on the essentials. “So what? If I’m human, what does it matter?”

“It wouldn’t matter if that was all of it, but a week after you were found you vanished from your nursery, reappeared ten minutes later covered in sand. Two days later you had an illness resembling chicken-pox – except that it wasn’t, it was a virus that nobody could identify. The day after that every child in the nursery had it, along with three nurses. Fortunately it was reasonably mild and quarantine stopped it spreading, but what if you’d come back with something as dangerous as bubonic plague?”

“You’re saying I fell into this rift again?” She wants to say it’s impossible, but she knows that it isn’t. She’s just been in Narnia, and has no idea how she got there.

“We think you opened the rift, fell through into another world, and somehow came back. But your rift energy readings didn’t fade, if anything they got stronger over time. They’re still ridiculously high. We decided that it was too dangerous keeping you anywhere near Cardiff. Professor Kirke was one of our advisors, he knew your father. At the time the doctors didn’t think that your mother could have another child. It turned out they had it wrong, but your parents were happy to have you anyway.”

“So what went wrong?”

“Kirke had his own agenda. We questioned him in 1941, after we detected the wardrobe rift. He’d been in Narnia and wanted to get back, built the wardrobe from magical wood he’d brought into our world. He thought you’d open the route. And he was right; you went through, so did your brothers and sister. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”

“No, but I’m sure you plan to tell me,” Susan said sarcastically.

“Whatever Narnia is, it plays by different rules to our world. Magic works! Can you imagine the threat that poses to this world, to the human race?”

“Threat?”

“The White Witch could control the weather in Narnia; Kirke told us she froze her original world. We don’t want to risk anything like that happening here. We think that Aslan is more powerful. For all I know Aslan might be capable of turning the sun off if he doesn’t like us.”

“He wouldn’t! He’s good!”

“We can’t take that risk.”

“I didn’t even open the wardrobe the first time, Lucy did.”

“You were nearby, sometimes that’s all it takes. As of last night your rift energy is still incredibly high. The wardrobe is gone but we had to make sure that you didn’t go anywhere near Cardiff, or anywhere else that you might open a rift.”

“So you destroyed my memory.”

“We had no choice.” His glance flicks away from her, for a fraction of a second, and she guesses that someone is coming – it won’t have been hard to track them down, and she knows that Harkness has allies in London.

“Of course you did. You could have told me the truth. I’m not sure I would have believed you, but you could have tried. Call your dogs off, Captain. I need to think about this. I promise I won’t go near Cardiff, at least for now. Just let me alone.”

His eyes flick to the side again, and she half-turns to see who’s coming. It’s a bad mistake – there’s nobody there, and as she turns back he’s drawing a pistol. She throws the knife by reflex, and he twists to avoid it and fires.

Pain explodes in her chest and she falls to the path, gasping for breath. Her vision is blurring as Harkness kneels beside her, saying “Susan… what were you thinking?”

“That I’ll see Aslan soon,” she whispers. Her left hand is in her pocket, and she touches her royal ring and feels a throb of power. She knows what’s coming next, with utter certainty, and with the last of her strength grabs his wrist, adding “And you’re coming with me.”

Together they fall into darkness.

**TBC**

The next part may be a couple of days, I know what's going to happen but haven't written it yet.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s cold and dark. Susan isn’t sure what she’s lying on, but it feels like bare rock. She hurts, especially her chest. She touches it and the pain intensifies. Tries to breathe, and there’s a bubbling noise. She remembers… Harkness shot her.

Beside her someone groans, and Harkness says “Where are we?”

“Not… sure.” It hurts to talk.

There’s a click, then another, a tiny spark, then a yellow light. Susan tries to focus, and sees Harkness sitting up, holding a cigarette lighter.

Harkness shouts “Hello!” There’s no echo, just endless silence. All she can see, in the light shed by the flame, is an endless dark surface, smooth grey rock. Harkness looks towards her, and frowns again. “Stay still, you’re bleeding.”

“I… noticed.”

“I don’t think I can do much about it, I don’t even have a handkerchief.”

It’s getting hard to talk. “Bottle… on a… chain… my neck... pour in wound…” Moments later she’s unconscious.

< T >

Susan wakes to darkness. Her chest still hurts, but not nearly as badly as before. She touches it, and the pain doesn’t get any worse.

“How are you feeling?” asks Harkness. 

“A little better, I think.”

“If that stuff comes from Narnia, they should export it. It closed your wound in about three minutes.”

“Any left?”

“No.” He hesitates, then says “I think the bullet’s still in there, it may be near your heart. Try not to move too much.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“About six hours. Sorry about the dark, I’m out of lighter fluid.”

“Still no stars? Something’s wrong, Narnia never has nights like that.” She feels for her handbag, fails to find it, and realises that she’s dressed as Queen Susan again. She hopes that the blood hasn’t made too much of a mess of her dress.

“Are you sure this is Narnia?” asks Harkness.

“It feels like it. Somewhere around Cair Paravel, maybe a bit further south.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” says Susan. “I couldn’t tell you how I know. I lived longer in Cair Paravel than I lived in London.”

“The alternative is we’re in a cave or something. Anything like that around Narnia?”

“Not like this. You’d see the roof and the walls, even with a lighter. Have you tried shouting?”

“A little. Couldn’t hear any echoes, not even when I fired my gun.”

“Did you actually call for Aslan?”

“I... no, not yet.”

“Try that. You’ll have to do it, it hurts me to talk.”

Harkness shouts “Aslan!” There’s no reply.

“Try again, louder.”

“Aslan!”

“Try again, third time’s the charm.”

“Aslan!”

Susan joins in, a croaking whisper compared to his bellow.

The sound seems to sink into the distance. They both listen, eventually Harkness says “I don’t think it’s working.”

Susan isn’t so sure; she feels an odd sense of immanence, a certainty that something is about to happen. “Feel that?” There’s a slight breeze, the first they’ve felt since arriving, and a faint smell of something fresh and clean. Then they hear music, a faint beautiful wordless song that seems to sob and exult simultaneously and slowly fades away.

“He’s coming,” says Susan.

Something coughs, the loud rasp low and menacing.

“I think you’re right,” says Harkness.

There’s another cough, this time a louder roar, much closer.

“Captain Harkness,” says Susan, “Aslan isn’t a tame lion. I think you’d better get rid of your gun, or he’s likely to hurt you.”

“Hate to lose it… Okay.” She hears a clinking noise as he empties the cylinder, then sends it sliding off across the rock.

Another roar, and the air is warmer, with the animal scent Susan associates with Aslan. Then his soft voice says “Daughter of Eve, Son of Boe. Why are you here? What is this foolishness?”

“I guess it’s my fault,” says Harkness. “I thought she was trying to kill me. I fired without thinking.”

“And you, Daughter of Eve?”

“I thought I was dying. I wanted to escape. To be with you.”

“Yet you brought this creature with you.”

“I… I think I wanted to show him that I was right. I wanted to win the argument. It was stupid.”

“Yes.” There’s a faint golden light, growing brighter by the second. The source is Aslan, standing about thirty feet away.

“That’s a big lion,” says Harkness.

Aslan paces towards them, saying “You should not be here.”

“Where are we?” asks Susan.

“This was once Narnia,” says Aslan.

“What happened?”

“Everything must come to dust. All things. Everything dies. Your family fought in the final battle. After that all that was good in Narnia moved on, into the real Narnia, the Undying Lands. Your family and friends are there. I have unmade what was here before.”

“But I was here a few hours ago!” says Susan. 

“No. You joined me in the Undying Lands.”

“Can we go there?” asks Harkness.

“No. The only way there for the living is the route Susan took, the path of dreams.”

“So if I die I’ll go there?” asks Susan.

“Eventually… yes. Eventually we will welcome you. It is not yet your time.”

“What about me?” asks Harkness. 

“You know the answer to that, Son of Boe,” says Aslan, a note of sorrow in his voice. “Everything must come to dust,” he repeats. “Even you. But it will not be soon.”

“Thought so,” says Harkness. He sounds resigned, defeated. Susan has no idea what they’re talking about, except a vague feeling that ‘Come to dust’ is a classical reference. Shakespeare, maybe? No, it's from the Bible. How does Aslan know it?

“What happens now?” asks Harkness, “What about the rift? Hundreds of people must have fallen into Narnia over the years.”

“Your rift is not my doing. I blocked the paths that lead to Narnia, but I cannot close it completely. Try to remember, Captain, that few go that way by choice, most have no wish to be your enemies.”

“It doesn’t feel like that to me. There are monsters out there.”

“Then it is time for you to return and resume your stewardship.”

“I guess.”

“And Captain…”

“Yes?”

“Next time I will not be merciful.” Aslan’s been circling closer as he talks, and suddenly he lashes out with a huge paw. Harkness flies off into the darkness, his shirt ripped to shreds, and Susan thinks she sees bloody gashes in his chest and neck. She stifles a scream, listens, but doesn’t hear Harkness land. There's blood dripping from Aslan's claws and paw.

“Aslan… I think you killed him!”

“No. I sent him back. But he will remember. And now, soon, it will be time for you to leave.” He sounds sad.

“There’s something you aren’t telling me,” says Susan. “Something in my past, maybe? Before they found me in Cardiff?”

“Oh Susan… I’m sorry, so sorry. I would have sheltered you from this if I could. Stand before me, Daughter of Eve.”

She summons up her nerve – thinking ‘not a tame lion’ – and walks forward, until her face is only a yard from his. His eyes brighten, and she inhales his warm breath, feels something move between them, an energy she doesn’t quite understand. She feels herself swaying, her eyes closing…

…and wakes, lying in a cobbled street at night, lit by a distant street lamp. She hurts; the pain in her chest is back, worst than ever, and when she coughs there’s blood. She remembers that she was hurt in London but the cordial was used in Narnia, or wherever the dark place was, not on Earth. When she used it to restore her memories she had to do it on Earth, or it would have been wasted. Does that apply to its healing too?

She coughs again, and realises she is dying.

**TBC**

Some of Aslan’s dialogue in this chapter is stolen from Rose Tyler in _The Parting of the Ways_ , who probably stole most of it from Shakespeare’s _Cymbeline_ , which derives from from _Genesis 3.19_ in the Bible. The theme music for Aslan’s arrival also comes from this episode – google “doctor who soundtrack bad wolf theme” to find it. Because if we’re talking omnipotent creatures who can make or destroy worlds, they have a lot in common…


	6. Chapter 6

Susan feels her life ebbing away, and wonders what all the fuss was about. Aslan told her she’d have to die before she could enter the undying lands; of course it’s going to hurt, it hurts to breathe, but it can’t last much longer. Maybe he was apologising because someone’s going to save her life, but there’s no sign of anyone coming to her aid, and she can’t seem to summon up the energy or breath to shout. She coughs, feebly, feeling the pain, and something else. Why is her breath glowing gold? She tries to move, raises a hand – and sees golden light. And finally starts to remember, and realise what’s happening.

Aslan’s breath triggered something in her body, started to strip away the illusion of humanity. He lied when he called her ‘Daughter of Eve.’

She’s regenerating.

< T >

_The Time War has been raging for… well, for all of time, of course… but on Gallifrey it’s been a handful of years. Everyone who can fight or work towards the war effort is busy, of course, but for the children it’s mostly something they hear about in lessons and the news. Horrible and scary, of course, but it’s mostly happening to other people, on distant worlds millions of years in the past or future. Until the Dalek fleets close in and the siege intensifies._

The light from her face and hands gets brighter, and she feels her body changing. Where is she anyway? She can feel the earth spinning around her – yesterday she would have meant that figuratively, now it’s literally true. About thirty miles a second in its orbit around the Sun, 650 MPH around its axis, which if this is Earth means she’s somewhere around the latitude of London. Or somewhere just south of Chile, which isn’t likely because she’d probably be at sea, or on an island where she could smell the ocean. Cardiff? The right latitude but no, that’s a coastal city too. There’s a half-moon in the sky, definitely Earth, it’s low above the horizon – she measures the angle instinctively – which means this is autumn or early winter, the angle tells her it’s about ten at night, and she’s in the northern hemisphere. And a grimy sign on the wall of one of the shuttered shops, advertising Wall’s Sausages, confirms that this is Britain. The thoughts spin through her mind, lightning fast, weirdly accurate by human standards, still a little vague for her. She doesn’t even know the date with any certainty.

She coughs again, feels the change intensifying, and spits out something hard. Harkness’s bullet, distorted where it broke the ribs she can feel knitting together. She knows what’s coming, and knows instinctively that she wants to do this somewhere where she won’t be seen. Torchwood may be around somewhere, she doesn’t want to end up back in their hands. She tries to hold back, and finds the energy to struggle to her feet and stagger along the road, looking for shelter. Instinct tells her to head north, and she decides it’s as good a direction as any.

_Hundreds, thousands, die every time the defences weaken, and the war itself is damaging the structure of space and time. The protected areas grow smaller, whole cities annihilated or reduced to living in bunkers, elsewhere there are vast areas of fluctuating time where you can age or lose a year or a century from one breath to the next. Evacuation seems impossible… but they’re Time Lords, impossible comes with the territory. If the universe is falling apart, maybe there are escape routes through the cracks, paths that end up outside the blockade. It’s a possibility, but the Daleks are scouring space and time for their enemies, and there are other horrors out there – the Nightmare Child, the Trickster, the Could've Been King, Weeping Angels and worse. They’ll detect them as soon as they arrive – if they’re still Gallifreyan. But that’s something that can be fixed._

_Between attacks a handful of rift portals are built and placed in the deep shelters. There’s no telling where they will lead; some may end up in suns or on worlds where nothing can survive, but rifts mostly occur where there’s intelligent life, where the multiple probabilities of free will stretch reality thin, it’s a chance worth taking. Those who go through will have to be disguised – normally a chameleon arch would be used, but there’s no telling where they will arrive; it would be stupid to be a Zarbi on Earth, an Ood on Mars, or a Judoon on Metabelius Three. But there’s an answer to that too; chameleon arches are a refinement of the TARDIS chameleon circuit, it ought to be possible to build something that will travel through the rift with evacuees, scan the area when they arrive, and quickly convert them to the optimum form for survival. Then destroy itself, since the Daleks will soon detect any Gallifreyan machine. The process will be fuelled by regeneration; hopefully just one life will be consumed, possibly two or three. Children, with all their regenerations ahead of them, have the best chance of surviving._

She passes a sweet shop and notices a vending machine for Coca Cola, priced at a shilling, another for cigarettes. Since when did ten Players cost two shillings? That’s scandalously expensive.

_Sixty-four units are built before the final attacks; they’re phenomenally complex and completely untested, and possibly the only hope that the Time Lords will survive. Maybe the evacuees will find a way to end the war; maybe they’ll simply out-last it, if the Daleks go down with Gallifrey. It has to be worth a try. The brightest and best children are selected, crammed with knowledge about the war, and told that they’ll be launched into the void at the last possible moment, if there’s no other hope of escape._

_It’s a good plan. The execution leaves something to be desired…_

She notices a gate with a dark yard behind it, tries it, but there’s a padlock. She can see the lock clearly, looks down, and realises it’s lit by the yellow glow from her face and chest. There can’t be much time left. It’s a good thing that the shops seem to be lock-ups, and don’t have flats overhead. She must look like some sort of spectre, a glowing ghost. Something’s still urging her north, she goes with it.

_The Daleks attack harder and with deadlier weapons than they have used before, and the defences fall fast. There isn’t time for safety checks or the carefully timed launches that are planned; instead, the refugees are launched into the void haphazardly, often under fire. Less than half survive the passage, the remainder are scattered through all of time and space and multiple dimensions. Some arrive where they can’t survive – in seas of concentrated acid, on radioactive worlds torn by nuclear war, in space – but most reach places where they have a hope of surviving. Instantly the chameleon circuits activate, assessing the situation and the native civilisation, changing them to forms that have the optimum chance of survival._

_It’s unfortunate that on Earth, as on many other worlds, the form that has the best chance of survival, of being cherished or at least protected by anyone that finds it, is a baby. Even more unfortunate that the disguise protocols change the subject’s mind to match the body._

There’s something singing in her head, a familiar energy that definitely doesn’t belong on Earth… the Time Vortex, or something enough like it to fool Gallifreyan senses. She’s wearing sensible heels, but one of them picks this moment to catch in a crevice between cobbles and snap; without a second thought she steps out of her shoes and goes forward with bare feet. It doesn’t matter if she cuts a foot, she’s regenerating anyway.

Up ahead, wooden gates slightly open – she forces herself through them, and sees a glimmer of light ahead, small pane windows, and a sign she remembers from her previous life on Earth, and from Gallifreyan history lessons: Police Public Call Box. She pounds on the door, keeps pounding until a white-haired man opens it, then pushes past him, into a room that’s bigger on the inside than the outside. He’s trying to push her out again when the regeneration begins in earnest.

< T >

“Well, who the devil are you?” shouts… no, she needs to pretend she doesn’t know who he is, or the horror he’s going to unleash on the universe sooner or later. In fact, she needs to suppress that memory as soon as she can, suppress anything that might affect events. The Time War is a fixed point now, any attempt to tamper with it before it happens would be disastrous. The knowledge weighs on her like a stone as the regeneration ebbs.

“Sorry to disturb you. I’ve had a bit of an accident, got stranded here.”

“What sort of accident? Is that blood?”

She looks down at the dress, bloodstained and slightly too big for her, and wonders what she looks like. She feels younger, say fifteen or sixteen, and the dress feels old and dowdy. It is, of course, if this is when she thinks it is. “Is this a Type 40? Golly, I’ve never seen one this old before.”

“Old?” He sounds querulous and indignant, though he must know that the Type 40 is long obsolete.

“To me, yes. I’m from… well, let’s just say Gallifrey’s future, as far as you’re concerned. Quite far in your future. But I can’t tell you anything about it.”

“Why not?”

“Just by being here I’m risking a paradox. I’m going to have to get rid of most of my memories, anything that could affect events. Give me a minute.”

“Oh, for goodness sake… who are you, you wretched girl?”

“Well, if I’m remembering it right, if I’m remembering your face correctly, my weave includes about a sixteenth part of your genetics. You could say I’m your great… whatever it is… grand-daughter. But you’d better call me Susan. I’ll need a surname of some sort…”

She concentrates, ignoring his spluttering questions, and begins the process of encapsulating most of her memories in an impregnable shell, and blocking her mind from any attempt at a psychic probe. When that’s done, when she’s as ignorant of his future as he is, they talk.

Eventually they reach a compromise. He wants to spend more time in 1960s London, she can help him by studying Earth’s school system from the inside. She’ll travel with him until he can find a way to return her home – she doesn’t tell him… something that she’s already forgotten, that means she’s not going to be able to go home quite yet. She drops just enough hints to scare him off asking more questions… she wishes she knows why it’s so important, fears that he might be going to die soon. He’s really quite sweet, a bit acerbic in his attitude but she’ll bring him around.

**Epilogue**

Susan survives the British educational system, cave-men, two encounters with Daleks, the Chinese and Aztec empires, the French revolution, alien worlds, and more. Eventually she parts with the Doctor in 2164, after the Dalek invasion of the Earth is defeated. Marries David, and thinks that they have a chance at happiness. That lasts a decade, through the post-invasion reconstruction, then slowly, piece by piece, she puts her memories back together, and realises she’s almost as responsible for the Daleks as the Doctor is. If she hadn’t erased her memories, if she’d interfered somehow, if they’d never visited Skaro…

No. You can’t mess about with fixed points in time. It takes her days to explain it to David, but he never quite believes it, can never understand that she couldn’t make changes, couldn’t prevent the invasion. She can’t tell him about the horrors to come, when the Time War flares up and nowhere is safe. It slowly poisons their marriage, already strained by their lack of children. There’s a rumour she remembers that the Doctor’s bloodline was manipulated to incorporate Terran genetics, but short of that she’s as alien to Earth as a Dalek, and has about as much chance of reproducing successfully with a human. When he notices his first grey hairs, and she still seems to be in her early twenties, she decides to leave. He doesn’t try to stop her.

A few days later she’s in Cardiff, looking out over the sea and wondering how to find the rift she’s heard so much about. Fifteen minutes later she feels a sense of wrongness, of danger, and looks across the road to see Captain Harkness sitting at a table outside a café, drinking with a beautiful woman who looks a little older than Susan’s apparent age. She thinks about ignoring him, but she’s curious. He doesn’t seem to be much older than the last time they met, but now she can feel his presence, knows why he isn’t aging, knows that he was already like that in 1949. She felt the wrongness then but didn't know the cause. He's not just a fixed point, he's a physical constant, a fact, as fundamental to the universe as Pi. How is that possible? She sits at another table and orders a snack, and covertly watches them eat. As she finishes her sandwich the woman heads inside, headed for the ladies room. Susan feels an uncharacteristic urge for mischief, and follows a minute later. She’s drying her hands when the other woman comes out of one of the cubicles and starts to wash, and Susan says “Excuse me asking, but do I know your friend from somewhere? I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere before.”

“Jack? You know him?”

“Maybe.” A weird thought crosses her mind, and she adds “Does he have some scars on his throat and neck, like he was clawed by something?” By the woman’s expression she knows she’s struck gold. A fixed point can’t usually be changed, but she suspects that Aslan doesn’t care about that.

“That bastard! He’s been screwing you, hasn’t he?”

“Actually no, but if that’s Jack Harkness I was there when he was hurt, a good few years ago. What story does he tell about it these days?” Because if there’s one thing that’s certain, Harkness will have a story.

“He claims he was clawed by a lion. Everyone knows they’re extinct!”

“That’s a good one. Okay, I’ve got to go. Give Jack my love!”

The other woman shouts “Whose love?” as she’s heading for the door.

“Tell him Susan!”

She uses another exit, boards the first monorail out of town, and never goes near Cardiff again. Four years later she finds her way off Earth.

Millenia later, and on a world several galaxies away, Susan’s last life ends; peacefully, as it happens. She wakes to the smell of honeysuckle and daisies, opens her eyes to find herself young again, lying on a cloak spread out in a meadow, under a perfect sky. She touches her head, feels a familiar coronet, and sits up to see Cair Paravel beyond some trees. She looks around, and smiles as she realises that Aslan has been watching her patiently.

“Daughter of Rassilon, welcome… at last.”

She hugs him, and goes with him to meet her family.

**Coda**

The year five billion and fifty-three. The Face of Boe, once Jack Harkness, is old, so old. When he finally meets the Doctor again it comes as a relief, a long-anticipated ending. He uses the last of his energy to open New New York, knowing that it will kill him, accepting his fate for the greater good. A last cryptic message, fade to oblivion; that’s the way it should be.

He wakes, lying somewhere soft, feeling no pain for the first time in several million years. He’s got a body again but it feels strange; the proportions seem wrong, and when he opens his eyes he discovers he has cute little paws. He’s a cat? Maybe there’s something to reincarnation. He can’t see anything else, not even the surface he’s lying on, just soft white light.

“Son of Boe. Son of Adam.” He looks around again, doesn’t see anyone.

“Who are you?”

“It’s time to begin your real work,” says the voice. “And for a new life, a new name. Welcome, Aslan…”

**End.**

Please don’t kill me…

I’m far from the first person to have associated boxes and wardrobes that are bigger on the inside than the outside, the story of Susan, and the Doctor and his associates. I think I’m the first person to come up with this particular spin on the tale, inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who and the character’s name, but if I’m wrong please let me know. If you’d like to see more I’d particularly recommend:

**From a World More Full of Weeping** by Azar  
 **To Be Left Behind** by WingedFlight  
 **Whose Other Side Is Salvation** by be_themoon

all of which can be found on Archive of our Own and other sites; on AO3 click the tag "Susan Pevensie" from my story then select the fandom "Doctor Who" before sorting.

Food rationing was introduced to Britain during WW2, and due to a succession of poor harvests and other problems continued to 1954. I’ve tried to be accurate about things like the approximate value of money, the WW2 forgeries, the status of the moon in November 1963, the legal age for smoking in 1943, etc.

One inconsistency - The 2013 episode _The Name of the Doctor_ shows the Doctor stealing the TARDIS with Susan. Obviously this is one of the things that got changed when the universe was rebooted ( _The Pandorica Opens_ ), history shifted so that Susan was always with the Doctor. Wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey strikes again.

And for anyone boggled by the coda, if you’re going to create an all-knowing omnipotent being, the oldest and allegedly wisest creature in the universe seems a useful starting point!


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